Path to Indie Publication Series is a companion series to Marshall Ryan Maresca’s Path to Publication. I have been avidly reading Marshall’s posts since I discovered his blog. Read Path to Indie Publication: Part I. Part II. Part III. Part IV. Part V. Part VI. Part VII. Part VIII. Part IX. Part X. Part XI. Part XIII.

Part XII—Promotion. What worked for me… [Gradually updating this post as more numbers come in.]

May not work for you. Mileage varies. Seriously.

WARNING LOTS OF NUMBERS THAT MAY BE MEANINGLESS.

My experiment this week? This is it. This blog post, okay probably two-three blog posts this week, but nothing else. I’m not doing any promoting as such. I’m simply letting my books sit at certain prices. ALL IS SILENCE is only $2.99. [Author’s note: I sold two copies during the week.] Ironically, TOILS AND SNARES, half the length is currently $3.99, because it has to stay at the original price for two weeks after a countdown promotion. Then I’ll move it to $2.99 and add STRAIGHT INTO DARKNESS, now at the New Release price of $6.99, temporarily selling for $4.99 from 11/22 to 11/30. [Three copies AiS and one of SiD in three days between promos.] Thus closing out the ELEVENSIES sale with all three major ebooks available for under $11.

I started the month with a 7 day Kindle Countdown deal on TOILS AND SNARES at $0.99, marked down from $2.99. Mixed in giveaway days for all my short fiction and dropped the price of ALL IS SILENCE to $2.99 for the entire month. I earned almost the same exact amount of sales in August as I did in November, but there was a long tale of Kindle Edition Normalized Pages (KENP) reads in August that did not stretch as high or as far as in November. In fact, November’s KENP was more than triple the number of reads. Of course, as soon as I said I had a 13 day streak of KENP reads in a post, it disappeared. I had feared it would and even commented to that effect on my note. KENP which counts for almost half a cent per ‘kindle “page”‘ equated to 26 sales at the sale price, an average of 4+ sales of TOILS AND SNARES a day over two weeks. Not too shabby. My advertising expenses? $65. My net income $61 and change.

Now ALL IS SILENCE has been on sale for $2.99 all month, selling steadily, but not really jumping until the adverts kicked in on the 9th and six sales on the 10th. The promotions did not come close to covering costs if we only count likely residual sales of ALL IS SILENCE, but the sales have continued steadily. And I am within a few dollars of covering all the advertising costs accrued so far this month. Sales of STRAIGHT INTO DARKNESS and KENP reads have made up for those sales. So this week with no paid promotion and no additional effort, it will be interesting to see if it continues to sell at that same pace.

Wattpad has gotten focused attention on other blog posts, but my final evaluation is that though I will sell few books through Wattpad, I will likely gain significant fans who do things like vote for my novel’s cover art, and hopefully, tell their friends, and hopefully, eventually become book buying adults who will grab future books in print or electronic form.

I’ve applied for three BookBubs, all for TOILS AND SNARES. I’ve not yet gotten one. I lowered it from a $0.99 a Free and feel that the number of reviews, holding steady at 15, is likely holding me back. I will continue to submit TOILS AND SNARES until it is either chosen or I am ready to submit ALL IS SILENCE at $0.99 price point which will probably be in February. So, if you have read TOILS AND SNARES or would like to in order to give it an honest review, please let me know.

Promotions Current Evaluation: What I’ve mostly learned is that a lot of the success is still random, but I’ve always come within a few dollars of breaking even on my grouped promos and that means that a lot more people are reading them, I’m really hoping for a few of those reads to turn into reviews. I’ll update my results the first week of December.

Semi-Final November: 48 copies of AiS ebook, 9 copies SiD ebook, 32 T&S. 17 full reads on KENP [about equivalent to selling 11 at $2.99] So, as of 11/29. I’ve sold between 100 and 106 ebooks in November. 111 would be better considering the Elevensies sale or even better 121! This does not count sales from slow reporters like BookBaby. Even later news: Ended November Elevnsies sale with 111 after some adjustments and 2 late posters from BookBaby came in. February Twosie Sale? Also 111 sales so far. 

Thanks for reading the Path to Indie Publishing.